Actually I think... Robbie is not pointing toward 'whatever reason' i
think he might be pointing toward 'innovation' or merely
'communication' which is why the original scientific journals came
about. The case of Leviathan and the Air pump is illustrative here.
The innovation of the air-pump that yielded the findings in that text
was not... the finding that was published as scientific. It was
published though, and the story goes that no one could reproduce the
technical object of the air pump from the published material. There
was knowledge missing... as happens in all design or productive work,
as it progresses toward publishable fact. The knowledge was tacit
knowledge... one could only get the knowledge and thus reproduce the
published science by going to the laboratory and being shown the
devices and their method of construction. The design was communicated
in print, but it did not produce the result, the design communicated
in person produced results that were communicated as science and
innovation. Publishing about artifacts has always been done too, and
that will continue, though it might not be an easy road, given that
artifacts to paper increases the necessary modalities of abstraction
by at one, and perhaps many. (rough outline of the story, sorry)
Personally, the metrics nonsense should really be thrown out as it
does very little to help anyone other than bureaucrats who are stuck
in a game of comparative legitimation, which is why they need
'objective' numbers. I think it is mostly a contrivance, but it is
getting institutionalized.
I think that communication and innovation are the two main issues...
even in the face of metrics. You lose track of those two things.
Innovation is key because that is what i think of as 'results',
scientific or otherwise. It is quickly recognized in peer relations.
Communication is the other key because innovations need to be
disseminated so that other people can use them, and depending on the
mode of inquiry/analysis, perhaps validate/invalidate them.
We should be publishing to communicate innovations, but there are also
other means of communication, looking back to the early journals...
which were created in part because people could not co-locate in a
conference or workshop, etc. for whatever reason.
I guess what I'm saying is that there are stories, and good histories
that make sense of some of our publishing practices and those stories
have implied norms for what should be published, when and how. It
might be worth retelling these stories in order to regenerate some of
those norms, thus forming a contra-ideology to the progressing metrics
based ideology.
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